Drought
by Evil Asian Genius
Summary: A shared moment, two cups of tea, and the falling rain.


Flowers drooped their burden of raindrops, a profusion of colors melting against a gray sky.

Somewhere far away, a shock of lightning, a rumble of thunder in the low afternoon twilight.

He looked up, felt the shiver of shadows as the rain fell, the rigidity of wood and paper, the round little shadows paving the tatami floor with a soft-rough cobble, overlaying the floor. But it was all gray, fuzzy and indistinct, a blur of feeling lacking certainty.

He sat undignified, long legs sprawled, watching the raindrops fall in this inner courtyard, strange and overgrown. Once it had been formal, rigid, manicured with precision, but nature had taken its course over years of neglect. Trees grew with wild abandon, hung over with green tendrils of crawling vines, the koi pond long overgrown with weed and lotuses, their roots strangling through bleaching fish bones.

Tatsumi turned the tea cup around in his hands, once. Twice. Looked at the swirl of iridescent blue and green and gray, thought about the smooth-pebbled surface. Admired the art with one eye for the aesthetic and one eye for the reality of this haunted place.

The house was quiet but for the murmur of rain. Rui must be sleeping, he thought. Exhausted to the point of sleep. Drugged with opiates. He ran the possibilities through his head. Whatever it was, it was a welcome break. Often, her voice woke him in the night; set his heart pounding as she called for Nagare. Called for a savior that would never come. And was probably never much of a savior in the first place.

He sighed, and set the cup down.

As he watched, the tea turned cold, trailing steam slowly dying until it was nothing but a slick-bright surface of water.

Days like this reminded him of his youth. It was easy to lose himself in old memories of another worn-out house, another grand estate torn by time and by poverty. Empty hallways shrouded in dust, sealed rooms taut with the breaths of ghosts, paper walls slowly disintegrating from mold and disuse.

He shook himself from the past like a man trying to fling off cobwebs.

Footsteps. He hadn't noticed them until they were nearly at the door. You're slipping, he said to himself as he folded his legs properly under him, sitting up straight.

The door opened, and he was not surprised.

"Master." He nodded politely.

"Oh." Nagare looked genuinely surprised. "I didn't expect to find you here." Flinching, he drew his yukata closer about himself, as if girding himself for war.

Tatsumi moved to stand. "I'll go..."

"No, it's all right." Nagare made a little dismissive gesture with his hand, and Tatsumi sat back down. "To be honest... I could use the company." His mouth moved, wry, something that was almost like a smile but not quite.

"If you don't mind, then." And Tatsumi frowned to himself, seeing Nagare tense up, retreating behind the stone facade of his face.

Nagare sat beside him, settling the long loose folds of his yukata, an absent, thoughtless gesture. Tatsumi fussed with his shirtsleeves, brushed off a tiny piece of lint, and eyed Nagare's sharp profile curiously as Nagare called for tea; watched the servant make it and serve it to the both of them, and dismissed her with the same indifference.

After she left, Tatsumi became even more aware of the silence: the pattering rain, darkening sky, the soft slither of the shifting shadows of Nagare's bandages.

He glanced over out of the corner of his eye. Nagare sat with hands wrapped around the ceramic cup, twin to Tatsumi's own, head bent down slightly over it. His mouth was half-open over the rising steam as if he was sipping the fragrance of the tea, as if touching the warm ceramic to his lips would break the spell. An attitude of prayer, and he thought he could see Nagare's breath, hot, twining with the steam from the cup.

And then Nagare suddenly exhaled, and Tatsumi realized he had been holding his breath.

He turned to stare at his own tea, and pressed his lips to the lip of the cup and thought how hard it was, how unyielding. Thoughts flowed unwelcome through his mind. How long had it been since he had been kissed? Or since he had kissed someone? He sighed, and sipped; it was bitter, sharp and medicinal, and he realized that Nagare must have drunk from it every day, the same bitter cup.

"I am sorry." Nagare's voice cut through his reverie. "I should have had the servant make you something else. This is my... My medicine." A strange sound rumbled through his throat, and it took a moment for Tatsumi to recognize it as something that was nearly laughter.

"It's all right," Tatsumi said, unnerved that Nagare had been observing him as acutely as he had been observing Nagare. "Just...different."

"Bitter. And it only gets more bitter as it cools." Nagare set it down, close enough to the edge of the porch for a stray raindrop to fall in. He stared at the symmetrical ripples, and then drew the cup back closer to himself.

Tatsumi's mouth moved slightly, feeling as though he should say something, but there was nothing to be said. So he drank the tea, and in time as it cooled, Nagare brought the cup up to his lips and drained the cold, bitter tea in a single draught.

They sat that way for a long time, watching the rain fall.

As it grew darker, the storm intensified; the wind picked up and the tops of the trees swayed mercilessly. Nagare stared with bright eyes, mouth half-parted, as fingers of lightning reached down to touch the ground and the rumble of thunder grew intense, shaking the rafters.

"We should go inside," Tatsumi finally said as a gust lashed rain onto them, dampening their clothes. He turned away at another gust, cupping a hand over his eyes to keep his glasses from being speckled with rain.

"Yes." But Nagare made no move to go until a servant came in briefly to light the lamps.

As they went back inside, Tatsumi paused to close the wooden doors, sliding them shut as the wind shook the building. He frowned, realizing his white shirt was nearly transparent where it had soaked through, the ends of his dark hair dripping wet along the tatami.

Nagare's step faltered, and quickly, Tatsumi caught him by the elbow, steadying him. "Are you all right?"

"It's nothing. A little stiffness from sitting too long." Nagare's mouth was drawn in a thin, tight line. "I'm fine. Just not as young as I used to be."

"Still. Shall I call for a servant to take you to your quarters?" Tatsumi tried to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to appear over-solicitous and touch on that quirky Kurosaki pride.

"It's all right." But just as Nagare moved to brush Tatsumi off, and just as Tatsumi stepped forward to steady him, a flash of lightning blinded the room; simultaneously a crack of thunder shook the entire house. They stumbled together, Nagare's weight colliding with him as his legs failed, and they fell in a tangle onto the floor. The electricity blinked and then died, plunging the room into darkness.

Skin on skin contact, and Tatsumi gasped, realizing how cold Nagare was, as if burning from within by ice, and for a moment he felt as if he were falling into the shadow that was Nagare, falling in until he felt his lips touch Nagare's in a brief touch of flesh that made his breath catch in his throat.

"Master, I..." Mid-apology, and then Nagare's lips brushed his, tentatively, testing, before drawing him into a slow, deep kiss that made the blackness of the room seem complete, a totality of night.

His hands touched wet bandages, felt the slippery-rough scales beneath them that he had thought he had only imagined seeing.

His fingers touched water-slicked hair, long and honey gold, but it slithered through his fingers like silk, and it seemed that in the darkness those long tresses must also be black.

They stayed like that for a long moment, exploring each other's lips, Nagare's cold hand running down the damp front of his shirt, teasing past the point of a nipple, before cupping the side of his waist with a firm grip.

Later, Tatsumi could not have said for certain what he would have done or would not, had not footsteps come running through the hallways, an urgent tattoo that warned them apart before anyone could have seen them.

"Master?" A worried, querying voice that Tatsumi identified as Miya.

"I am here." Nagare was sitting with stiff formality as the warm glow of a lantern filled the room. "What is it that you need so urgently that you must enter without knocking?" His voice was sharp, severe, and the girl cringed at his reprimand.

"I'm sorry, Master. I just wanted to see if you were all right. The lightning-"

"As you can see, I am fine. You may leave the lantern and go." His grass-green eyes were unreadable, his hair aglow from the flame of the lantern. Shadows moved strangely over the planes of his face, catching unearthly hollows and angles.

"Yes, Master!" And just as quickly, she slid the door closed, and Tatsumi could hear her steps, tentative in the dark, finding their way through the blackness of the big empty house.

A faint commotion outside. He heard the sounds of many voices, calling out and exclaiming in a mix of curiosity and fear. Tatsumi stood, and drew aside the heavy doors leading into the garden.

The servants were on the far side of the courtyard; he could just barely see their moving silhouettes through the darkness, lit from behind by the weak glow of lanterns and candles. They were pointing; one of the big trees in the center was blasted by lightning, still smoldering in the storm-lit night. It had cracked in half down the center.

"So it hit the tree," Tatsumi marveled. "We're lucky that it didn't collapse onto the house." He shut the doors firmly, pausing to straighten the smooth wood when one caught at the edge of the lintel.

But when he turned, Nagare was gone.

* * *

Written for my long-time proofreader/beta-reader and friend, Aeanagwen, who coincidentally, was also the inspiration and proofreader for this story. Thank you, A-chan!


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